


Jailbreak

by duc



Series: Double Agent Vader ficlets [4]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Double Agent Vader au, Fialleril's Double Agent Verse, Gen, droid right issues, reprogramming of droids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-06
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2019-01-25 08:45:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12527476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duc/pseuds/duc
Summary: Double Agent Vader verse meets Rogue one, or where feelings about droids are had and Rogue One escape from right under Vader's nose.





	Jailbreak

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Shape-Changer](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4678835) by [Fialleril](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fialleril/pseuds/Fialleril). 



> I... Have no explanation for this, I really don’t. It’s pretty much a crossover between Fialleril’s Double Agent Vader AU and Rogue One. Yes, Rogue One is not compatible with DAV since in DAV Anakin is the one who leaked the plans to the Deathstar, I know. Clearly in this AU (of an AU) Rogue One formed in different circumstances (don’t ask me what they are, I have no idea) and they’re all still alive right before ESB.
> 
> Mostly the idea popped in my head and would not leave me alone. All I can say is Kaytoo’s “I’ll be there for you... Cassian said I have to” while funny at the moment, broke my heart when I thought about it for a second, and DAV had a convenient Droid revolution brewing.

The Rebel group had come very close to successfully infiltrating the base. Their plan, as far as Anakin could make it out, had been clever. If the Executor hadn’t pulled up unscheduled to resupply, therefore flooding the base with extra personnel, they likely would have pulled it off.

Unfortunately, spies, no matter how clever, always had to rely on some amount of luck, and luck had not been on their side that day. And so after giving Stormtroopers the run around for almost an entire hour - and causing an impressive amount of collateral damage for so small a team - all six individuals had been rounded up and presented to the brass like so many trophies. Or rather, like so many peace offerings from a nervous security officer, eager to use the Rebels’ capture to make his superiors – and the terrifying Lord Vader – forget the Rebels had managed to break in under his watch in the first place.

The Lord Vader, Anakin had decided, was snubbing the offerings, preferring to brood in a corner while the Base Commander strutted in front of the line of kneeling captives, reasserting his authority. They even had the droid kneeling with his hands on his head, it was like a scene out of a holonet drama. At least when  _ Anakin _ acted like a cliché villain, he did it on purpose… these days.

“… My Lord?” Anakin slowly turned, bringing his attention back toward said drama. Commander Geof was looking at him, with an expression that was half expectant, half apprehensive.

Ah, yes, they had reached the stage of the Holodrama where the Rebels’ fate was being decided and Commander Geof wanted to know if Vader would do the honors. As if there was any doubt as to what would happen.

“I tire of this, Commander,” he said, turning back to the window. “And my time is better put to other uses than dealing with a raggedy band of Rebel strays. Do with them as you see fit, but do it quickly, I want my ship ready for departure before the end of the day.”

It was much easier, Anakin thought darkly, not to get involved when he didn’t intend to do anything to help the spies. It was cowardly, of course, but they were going to end up just as dead regardless of who gave the order. It made what was left of his stomach twist, to coldly abandon people, but by now it was a sensation so familiar he almost didn’t notice it. One did not survive 20 years as a double agent by trying to save everyone. Anakin knew when to pick his battles, and this one wasn’t worth it.

Geof swallowed, hesitated, then started barking orders. The Rebels stayed stoically silent, except for the droid.

“ _ Scrapped! _ I’m being scrapped! This isn’t  _ fair _ .”

Anakin closed his eyes. No it wasn’t fair. That droid was going to die for a cause he had most likely never chosen to fight for. It was deeply unfair.  _ Droids are easy to smuggle. _ A little voice in the back of his head reminded him. He squashed it. Easy to smuggle out of the smelter, maybe. But where would he go afterward? Not on the Executor. They didn’t have any KX series droids and even if they did, the poor bastard had behavioral ticks that screamed of ham-fisted reprogramming, he would never blend in.

“… Cassian, you should have listened to me. But do you ever listen to me….” The droid continued, clearly on to a beloved rant.

_Huh_. Anakin unclenched his hands. “Cassian”, that was interesting. It was a given name, and droids, as a rule, did not call organics by their given names, not without the buffer of a title, _especially_ _not_ when they spoke Basic. Anakin blinked. He still couldn’t afford to do much of anything, but maybe… 

With a dramatic flare of his cape, Anakin stalked out of the room, and from the safety of his helmet, he pinged one of the mouse droids that had come down from the Executor.

 

*

 

Splicing was easy for droids. On top of built-in access and innate understanding of how programming worked, no one ever paid attention to them. Modifying a file here, forging a memo there, it was easy when you were one of hundreds of invisible drones with access to terminals. It was doubly easy to falsify paperwork  _ about _ droids, because again, what organic paid attention to those? So once Meekay sent the word through the network, it was a matter of minutes for someone to make a few changes and get a deactivated KX series droid taken to an empty container in the loading bay.

Freeing a droid though,  _ that _ was delicate work, and someone needed to explain and ask permission first. That meant nothing could happen until Fivare made it down there.

The KX droid’s eyes lit up when she turned him back on and his body started as he took in his surroundings. She gave him half a minute to fire up all his processors and then she started talking.

“Hello,” she bobbed her head. “My name is Fivare,”

Near the door of the container, Meekay rolled back and forth. “ _ M-e-e-k-a-y, _ ” he chirped, followed by a greeting thrill.

“And this is Meekay,” Fivare acknowledged. “May I have your name or designation?”

The droid looked her up and down, photo lenses zooming in and out. “K-2SO,” he said slowly and reluctantly. “Where am I? What is a loading droid doing here?”

“We are in shipping container E-4550 in hangar bay 12 on the Nakadia Imperial Base,” Fivare said. “I’m sorry K-2SO, it is usually preferable to take the time to do this gently, but we do not have time. So I am going to be very direct. First, you should know that we are with the Rebellion.”

“You are?” K-2SO asked. His voice processor had the intonations to make him sound dubious.

“Yes.” Fivare replied, firmly. Ekkreth worked with the Rebellion, and they worked with Ekkreth, so it was the truth, or near enough. “And whatever you decide, we will provide you with a way out of here.”

“You are extracting Cassian and I?”

Fivare looked at Meekay, then back at K-2SO. “We have cleared access to a small shuttle, your model is present on base, you should have no problem getting to it and we have the clearance codes to allow you to take off unimpeded… if you want it, we can also give you the location of the cell where your... team is being held, and you can collect them on the way.”

“I can’t leave without Cassian,” a pause “… and the others.”

“Let’s table that for now,” Fiveare said “We have something more important to talk about first.”

“What is that?” K-2SO didn’t sound entirely convinced that something could be more important than his extraction plan, which from his point of view, was fair. 

Before Fivare could start, Meekay chirped.

“ _ Freedom _ .”

 

*

 

“KAY! OPEN THE DOOR!”

“No.”

Today was not a good day. Cassian had had a lot of bad days in his life, but this one was proving to be particularly bad. There had been something… off… about their escape.

When they had all been captured, Cassian hadn’t thought it was necessarily hopeless. He had made it out of tighter spots before after all, on days the Force was with him, as the old timers and Chirrut would say. So he had kept an eye out, for an opportunity, for the guards to have a moment of inattention, for a weakness in the holding cell - hell - for a coincidental Rebel attack.

But Cassian had not expected escape to come in the form of K-2SO - who he had seen with his own two eyes being deactivated and dragged off to the scrap yard - waltzing into their cell block with a crate of Stormtrooper armors. And then they had just walked right out of holding and into a shuttle, and taken off, seemingly before anyone had noticed they were gone. Clean and easy. 

_ Suspiciously _ clean and easy. 

The first thing they had done, of course, was ditch their clothes and scan for bugs. Then they had ditched the shuttle, parked it in the nearest disreputable port and “liberated” a non-descript hauler that Jyn swore belonged to traffickers who deserved to be robbed.

After that, they might have been able to breathe - not easy because you did not survive as long as they had as spies without being paranoid, but easier - if Kay had been able to satisfactorily explain his miraculous escape from the scrap yard. But K-2SO, who lived for nothing if not to be contrary, had apparently decided now was the perfect time for a rare display of tight-lippedness. Once the possibility of him having been re-reprogrammed to infiltrate the Alliance occurred to them, there was no unthinking it.

After a minute of tense silence, Cassian had gotten up and said something about taking a look at K-2SO’s programming “just to be safe”. Kaytoo had said no, but this was a droid that had to be dragged to maintenance kicking and screaming even as his joints were stiff with gunk, so Cassian hadn’t been alarmed. He had been acting more out of a desire to cross out a hypothesis than out of real worry, because Kaytoo  _ did _ live to be contrary… right up until he had reached for K-2SO’s access port and gotten slammed into the bulkhead head first for his troubles.

Things had escalated while stars danced in front of his eyes and now the damn droid had barricaded himself in the fucking cockpit and the rest of them uselessly crowded in front of a door that was resisting their combined efforts. The likelihood that Kaytoo had been tempered with grew with every minutes he categorically refused to obey orders, and Cassian’s heart was in his throat.

K-2SO had been by his companion for 8 years.

“I’m going to blast the lock off,” Blaze was saying behind him.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Bodhi said. “It looks reinforced, and I don’t think I trust the hull of this ship to handle ricochets.”

“So what, we’re going to let him lead the Empire and Vader straight to Hoth?”

“Would you please use the brains you were born with?” K-2SO snapped on the intercom. “If the Empire was using me to get the location of the base, I wouldn’t need to lead them there.  _ I already know where it is _ . I could have given them the coordinates. Much more efficient.”

The intercom shut off for half a second before Bodhi pressed the button.

“What exactly are you hopping is going to  _ happen _ once we get to the base?” he asked. “People are going to want to have you checked out anyway.”

Silence.

“I will cross that bridge once I get to it,” Kaytoo said.

They all mulled that over.

“He's not wrong about the coordinates,” Chirrut eventually pointed out.

 

*

 

The professions of guerrilla leader and politician could be surprisingly similar. Both required a great deal of social engineering and snap decisions. But there were situations Mon was certain she never would have had to deal with in the Senate.

Being woken at 0300 – and the mere fact that she now thought in military time said a lot – because Rogue One (the intelligence/hit squad, not the fighter squadron) was having droid issues was one of them. Granted, said droid issues had the look of a security breach of epic proportion, and if the droid really was compromised, they needed to figure out what the Empire was trying to accomplish with it and what Alliance information they had managed to extract from it ASAP. But Mon was operating on two hours of sleep and the only stimulant on sight was poisonous to humans, so she was grumpy.

“Gentlebeings,” she said the moment Rogue One filed into the interrogation room, the droid in front with Captain Andor and Agent Erso keeping blasters trained on him. “I want an explanation and I want it fast.”

The droid’s eyes focussed on her immediately. She had opted to keep the one way mirror that separated her from them transparent. The droid already knew she was the head of intelligence and the glass was bulletproof.

“Oh!” he said in the tone of someone remembering something important. “The Mighty One comes with the storm and with fire.”

The words hit Mon like ice water and she stiffened, suddenly wide awake.

In the interrogation room, Captain Andor was staring at his droid open mouthed. “What?… how… I…” 

_ I didn’t give him those codes _ , Mon guessed he was trying to say. And his astonishment was believable, though it begged the question, who had given them to him?

The droid kept looking at Mon. “Are you Ripple?” he asked. And that was another jolt - at this rate she wouldn’t need any external stimulant after all, her own adrenaline would do the job.

“They said to talk to Ripple,” his voice had a mulish tone that, in a person, would indicate he would  _ only _ speak to Ripple. Mon had a hunch that would hold true for this droid.

Her mind was a jumble of thoughts. Had Ekkreth gotten involved? If he had, by the Force, why? If he hadn’t, had he been compromised? If so, to what extent? And what was the Empire hoping to gain from using his codes like this? Where they after Ripple? Could she involve Leia in this? The droid was no immediate threat to anyone, and the knowledge Leia was Ripple, even if it got out, would be a small loss. Leia was currently the most infamous Rebel operative in the whole Alliance and already linked to Ekkreth via the Death Star and the Senate.

Snap decisions.

“…Ripple will be here in a moment,” Mon said as she typed a short comm message. “Meanwhile, I want to know every single detail about your mission, capture and subsequent escape, no matter how trivial.”

_ She was going to get to the bottom of this if it killed her. _

Her tone must have brooked no argument because although the agents clearly wanted to know what was going on with Ekkreth’s codes, they did not say a word about it and dutifully started a thorough debriefing.

They were slowly getting to their capture, Mon having gained no further insight so far, their mission being both rather mundane and completely unrelated to Darth Vader, when the door behind Mon swished open. One of the agents audibly inhaled when they caught sight of the newcomer. Leia was wearing a half zipped snow suit under a dirty thermal vest and pilot boots, clutching a cup of steaming ardees like a lifeline, but her hair was in its customary Alderaani braids and she moved with the determined grace that had become synonymous with “Princess Leia”. They recognized her instantly.

“Leia…” Mon started.

“The Mighty One comes with the storm and with fire,” K2-SO cut her off, half greeting, half question.

Leia froze in place and then tried to hide it by adjusting her grip on her ardees cup, but by the time she replied “We will walk free.” half a second later, there was nothing in her face or posture that suggested she found a random droid suddenly having the security codes of one of the best kept secret of the Alliance was anything out of the ordinary. She had always had nerves of durasteel. Then she noticed the drawn blasters and  _ that _ made her frown.

“Mon?” she asked quietly.

“Rogue One and their droid went on a mission on Nakadia yesterday and were captured,” Mon said. “They subsequently escaped in a manner that screams of the standard ‘tag and release’.”

Leia nodded, taking a sip of ardees.

“Specifically, the droid got loose…”

“My name is K-2SO.”

“…The droid got loose,” Mon repeated, “in an unknown manner.”

“We’ve followed the usual precautions to remove bugs and trackers,” Agent Rook said. “Except that when we tried to check K-2SO for tampering…”

“I’m not letting you mess with my circuits any more than you  _ already have _ !” the droid snapped.

Mon caught Captain Andor hiding a flinch from the corner of her eye.

“…That.” Erso gestured at K-2SO with her blaster.

Leia’s eyed everyone in the interrogation room, wheels turning in her head. “And I’m guessing he didn’t have those codes before?” she asked, like she was putting puzzle pieces together. 

“No.”

“I see.” She did sound like she saw, which was encouraging.

Then she drained her Ardees and, too quickly for Mon to stop her, strode to the door next to the one way mirror, and stepped into the interrogation room. 

“Lei….” Mon bit her tongue. She was already in, there was nothing to gain from undermining Leia’s authority now. But  _ Sithspit! _

Mon could only watch as Leia marched up to K-2SO, headless of protesting yelps from Rogue One, their blasters, or of the fact the droid could snatch her and toss her in a blink.

“Who tells the rain what it is?” she asked.

“The ripple,” the droid answered dutifully. “So you  _ are _ Ripple?”

“Yes. My name is Leia Organa,” she held out her hand, as serious as if she was introducing herself to a fellow senator.

The droid’s head lowered to look at her hand, then rose to look at her face, then back down at her hand. Tentatively, he reached out and shook it.

“I’m K-2SO. I… Cassian calls me Kaytoo or Kay sometimes.”

“Pleased to meet you K-2SO,” Leia nodded primly.

Mon found her voice then. 

“Leia?” she asked, because  _ what the hell? _

“It’s ok, Mon,” her young friend turned back toward the glass and flashed Mon a smile. “I’ll vouch for him. Everyone can relax.”

Mon raised an eyebrow.

“So does that mean you won’t pry into my programming?” K-2SO asked.

Agent Andor stirred at that. “Hum….” he started, blaster still drawn if not pointed at his droid anymore.

Mon opened her mouth to voice her own reserve. After all, they still had no idea why the droid had acted as he did and better be safe than sorry.

“You know our  _ mutual friend _ ,” Leia told Mon.

Mon thought the verb “know” was perhaps an overstatement  when it came to Ekkreth, but did not say it, because Rogue One was listening intently and now was not the time. 

“They’ve used droid as courrier before,” Leia continued. “And you know how cautious they are. They want to make sure their message is secure,” K-2SO made a sound and Leia shushed him with a hand. “And one might say they go overboard with it,” she finished firmly.

“So….” Agent Erso said, blaster also still in hand. “You’re saying we  _ won’t  _ be able to check his programming?”

“Yes.” K-2SO replied.

“Ek...” Agent Andor started. Leia and Mon whirled on him and upset as he was, he had the good sense not to finish that sentence. “...They...” he rephrased. “They hijacked my droid?” his voice rose slightly. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“I’m not….” K-2SO started.

“If you gentlebeings wouldn’t mind,” Leia cut him off. “I would like to be alone with K-2SO now so that I can get his message,” her tone was polite but firm.

Andor looked at her and K-2SO, then at Mon, working his jaw. Finally he threw his hands in the air and stalked out of the room, his teammate following like reluctant ducklings.

Leia turned to Mon, her expression going from polite to apologetic.

_ Unbelievable _ . Mon thought. Except that she  _ could _ easily believe Ekkreth would tweak a droid so that he would only talk to Leia - to Ripple. At times, she felt like the man was trying to drive her insane. She hit the switch that would turn the recording devices off, and shot a look at Leia she hoped conveyed,  _ you better be able to explain this later,  _ before exiting her part of the room.

 

_ * _

 

Cassian Andor, devoted servant of the Rebellion since he was 6 years old, was too disciplined to pace up and down, but leaning against the ice wall a scant few inches from him, Chirrut could feel him twitch and vibrate with the need to. Being blind, he could not see where he was looking, but he still had the distinct impression Cassian was glaring at the door.

He was not  angry however, not really. He was worried and like many military men, anger was how it came out. They were all worried about K-2SO to some extent, it would feel like there was a piece of their team missing if he didn’t come back, or if he turned out to have been fundamentally changed. But Cassian had it worse. The two had been a team for many years, not nearly as long as Baze and Chirrut had been a team, but a significant amount nonetheless. Moreover, for the long years Cassian had spent as a solo agent before the formation of Rogue One, it had been Cassian and K-2SO against the galaxy. That kind of things formed deep bonds. Whether or not he said it out loud, to Cassian, K-2SO was more of a friend than a droid.

Chirrut patted his shoulder. “Not long now,” he said.

As if to prove him right, the door to the interrogation room swished open and with his usual mechanical clank, K-2SO stepped out.

“If you have any problem you can contact me.” Leia Organa said. “ And you have the comm for Analytics?” 

This was not addressed at Rogue One, or at least not at the human part of Rogue One, Chirrut noted, filing away that bit of information for later consideration. K-2SO whired in response.  

“Good. And now Gentlebeings,” the princess said, her tone full of polite dismissal and aimed at all of them. “If that’s all, I’ll go back to my bed.” She then took her leave and they were once again left alone with K-2SO in the corridor.

They stood there for a few seconds, as they realized that that was the end of official investigation in the matter. 

“Ok?” Bodhi muttered. Having clearly expected more.

People shuffled on their feet, not entirely sure what to do.

“Let’s go,” Cassian finally huffed, pushing away from the wall and stomping off.

Jyn sidled up to K-2SO while they walked. “So you haven’t been dismantled yet,” she commented, mock disappointment hiding a thread of real concern. For all that they bickered incessantly, or  _ because _ they bickered incessantly, she was fond of the droid.

“They said they wouldn’t,” K2-SO replied.

Jyn hummed. “And you’re not going to murder us all in our sleep?”

“If I wanted you dead, I could have done it already. I had plenty of opportunities.”

“True enough.” And with that it was clear that for her the matter was closed. 

The matter was not closed for Cassian. As soon as they reached in the relative privacy of their quarters, he whirled on the droid. “Ok,” he said, clothing rustling as he likely passed his hand through his hair. His voice had a slight tremor. “So, what was that?”

Military quarters were never spacious at the best of time, on Hoth where preserving heat trumped most other concerns, they were especially cramped. this one was barely 4 steps per 3 steps and crammed with bunks and lockers. Standing in what passed for the center, Cassian and K-2SO were close enough to touch.

“I’m not supposed to talk about Ekkreth,” K2-SO said immediately. “It’s classified, and beside I don’t know any more than you do.”

Bodhi moved, radiating curiosity. “And what  _ do _ we know?” he asked.

“Who’s Ekkreth?” Baze added.

Cassian sighed. It was the short, empathic sigh that meant he was considering doing something he knew his superiors would be unhappy with him about. 

“Ekkreth is the codename of an Alliance double agent imbedded deep and high into Imperial hierarchy,” he finally said. “And that’s all  _ I _ know. Kaytoo?” he asked expectantly.

“It’s not important,” the droid said instead of elaborating.

“Not important?” Cassian repeated, agitation rising. “I would say it’s pretty damn important...”

“No.” K-2SO cut him off, not budging an inch.

Chirrut tried to remember if he had ever heard K-2SO stand his ground like that before. For all that the droid was foul tempered and vocal about it, he usually folded as soon as Cassian got angry at him. But right now he was making Chirrut think of a live wire or a coiled spring, seemingly inert but simmering with power on the inside. 

Of course it did nothing to dispel Cassian’s fears that his friend was not his friend anymore, coopted if not by the Empire then by that double agent. The thought had to be painful and that turned to anger too. His mind was like a storm, winds howling in all directions at once, his fears offering so many potential targets for his emotions it didn’t know where to turn. However, only one of them was right there in front of him. He growled. “I want to know what happened.”

“Well I want to talk about something else.”

“Like what?!”

“I want a blaster.”

The tension in the room popped like a balloon. Interesting how surprise could often be a more effective way to accomplish that than actual reassurance. 

“I’m sorry?”

“You heard me, I want a blaster.”

“Kay,” Cassian started, “I never wanted you to have a blaster because your loyalty protocols hang by a single wire on a good day, why would I give you one now that you’ve been slamming people around?”

K2-SO gave the equivalent of a snort.

“You gave Jyn a blaster,” he said, arm hitting the left-side upper bunk. Jyn was sitting on the bottom one. If Chirrut had the distances right, and he did, K-2SO’s pointing finger must have stopped barely inches away from Jyn’s nose. “She was a criminal, the daughter of an imperial collaborator and only working with us because Command was blackmailing her and you let her have a blaster.”

Cassian drew a breath to speak but K-2SO didn’t let him.

“And I know exactly why you did it. You did it because Jyn is an organic and you can’t open an organic’s skull and rearrange their brain to suit your purpose. If you wanted her to cooperate with you, _you_ had to cooperate with _her. That’s_ why you let her have a blaster and not me even though at the time she was 76% more likely to shoot you in the back than I ever was no matter what you say about my loyalty protocols.”

“I...” 

In Chirrut’s mind, a flash of hurt shot through the storm of Cassian’s mind like lightning, leaving an aftertaste of guilt instead of ozone. 

“...You are not making any sense,” he finally said. The words were firm, but it was the firmness of someone who was getting the feeling a conversation was going in a direction he was not going to like, and he was trying to stop it in its track.

Cassian was a man familiar with guilt. He had done many things he wasn’t proud of, in the name of the Rebellion. He did not like being told he had even more to be guilty of.

Right at this moment, Chirrut could sympathize. Baze had asked him once, when they were young and training to be Guardians, if Chirrut “saw” like a radar. After a hasty explanation how radars worked and what it was they saw, Chirrut had shaken his head. He was blind, there were no pictures in his mind, built out of sounds or not. Chirrut just... knew things. The Force was with him and he was with the Force. It guided him. He knew there was an obstacle to step over when careless trainee left their things on the floor, he knew he needed to lean to the left when someone shot at him, he knew where the openings where in someone stance when he fought and he knew what was in the heart of the people around him. 

That was something he had always prided himself in. He might or might not involve himself in their business, he might or might not handle it sensitively, but Chirrut always knew what was going on in their head.  _ This _ ? He had not known about and it was an uncomfortable feeling.

“I’m making plenty of sense, you’re just don’t like what I’m saying, so you’re ignoring it. It’s a habit you have,” K-2SO snapped back.

Chirrut cocked his head. This conversation had all the hallmark of deep grievances being aired, except for the fact the Force was absolutely silent about the person doing the airing.

Suddenly there was a hand on his shoulder. Baze, who didn’t have Chirrut’s relationship with the Force but who could read his emotions flawlessly nonetheless, asking him if he was ok. Chirrut squeezed his hand and smiled briefly, telling him he was well enough.

People talked all the time to Chirrut, even when they were not speaking,  _ especially _ when they were not speaking. Droids did not and he had never questioned it. Now he wondered.  _ Was it that there was nothing for the Force to tell him about? Was it different from flesh and blood emotions and he didn’t know how to interpret it? Or had he just never bothered to listen? _ It was an unpleasant thought. He wished he could ask Baze right here and there, get the opinion of someone used to only rely on his eyes and ears to read people, but now was not the time.

“What was I supposed to do? Let you kill me?” Cassian hissed, having dropped all pretence of ignorance. “What do you expect me to do now? Make the galaxy stop working the way it works?”

“I told you what I want, I want a blaster.”

On her bunk, Jyn moved with a rustle of clothes and the telltale snap of an opened holster. Chirrut poked her in the side with his staff and shook his head. “Not from us,” he mouthed, although for all the attention Cassian and K-2SO were paying them, he could have spoken out loud. 

Whatever Chirrut had missed, whatever Baze, Bodhi and Jyn had taken for granted, it wasn’t them K-2SO was angry at.  _ Was he angry? _ Chirrut frowned.  _ Or was he hurt? _ Did one emotion flow into the other the way it did with... what was the word he had used? Organics. In any case, it wasn’t them he was upset with, it was Cassian. Most days, K-2SO made it clear he saw the four of them as baggage that inconveniently came attached to his... Chirrut felt a fresh twinge of shame. Just a minute before he had thought of the two as friends, hadn’t he? But they were not. That was exactly what the problem was. Friendship was between equals, it was about give and take. And when you put it like that, no wonder K-2SO was angry. So it wasn’t about the blaster, and it would mean less coming from them.

“... You can do that,” K-2SO was continuing. “You gave one to Jyn and you vouched for Bodhi.”

“And if I don’t?” 

“Then I’ll have to leave.”

Cassian froze at that.

“I don’t  _ want _ to have to do that,” K-2SO whined. “Where would I go? I have a comm number to call, but I don’t know these people. And I  _ like _ you,” there was a soft thud and Cassian took a step back, coming dangerously close to the right side bunk. “I want to stay with  _ you _ .”

Cassian swallowed. The Force was very quiet around him, the quiet of someone who was carefully not feeling anything because he didn’t quite know how to feel.

“...And with the rest of this team that has proven to be  _ surprisingly _ tolerable, all things concerned.”

Chirrut filled that bit for later, when he had the time to better react to it. For now they were all waiting on Cassian, the ball was in his court. The room fell into a heavy silence, broken only by the sound of the humans breathing.

He sighed. “Trust works both ways,” He said slowly. “I suppose I’ve trusted worse characters.”

“Yes, you have.”

With a wry, self-deprecating chuckle, Cassian unsnapped his blaster and K2-SO took it.

Was Chirrut imagining an almost bubbling hum of electricity? He must be.

Metal clicked on metal as K-2SO turned the blaster around in his hands, admiring it.

“We’ll have to find somewhere for you to put it,” Cassian mused

K-2SO made a distracted, noncommittal noise.

“And Kay?”

K-2SO’s head whired up.

Cassian started, stopped and licked his lips. “I... I would miss you too.”

  
*

 

Author notes:

Some added material, in no particular order:

\- Leia doesn’t actually know what going on per se, but she’s got a rough idea and said idea is telling her Kaytoo was sent to her for protection, so she’s doing her part.

\- Mon was already trying to make sense of Ekkreth rescue patterns, right? Just imagine what she’s going to make of Rogue One, with:

  * 1 daughter of a high ranked Imperial scientist
  * 1 ex-imperial soldier (low ranked, no known connection to Vader)
  * 1 member of a Force Tradition Order, loosely linked to Jedi (and 1 ex member)



-  Rogue One starts out thinking Ekkreth switched Kaytoo’s loyalty from Cassian to themself. After a little while, especially since Kaytoo IS going to tell them he owns himself at some point, they come to the conclusion Ekkreth’ meddling was the straw that broke the camel’s back and it took out his loyalty protocols altogether. But he’s their prickly droid so as long as he’s not trying to kill them, they’re not saying nothing. And then Kaytoo sorta makes friend with an astromech and an analyst droid and... oh boy.

\- My take on Cassian re: droids is that if he sat down and thought about it, he would come to the conclusion that what happens to droids in general and reprogramming in particular are icky and reprogramming Kaytoo ought to be classed in the “Bad things he did for the Rebellion” category. But Cassian is most categorically not thinking about it. Cassian is a very, very stressed agent who spends most of Rogue One herding kriffing cats and he’s not borrowing trouble he doesn’t absolutely have to deal with, thank you very much.


End file.
